The
Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, the ruling party in Palestine, is
under increasing pressure from much of the international community to
acknowledge the scofflaw state of Israel’s “right to exist.” The “right
to exist” specifically refers to the question of whether or not the
Jewish people, have a right to erect a homeland for themselves on the
land of the Palestinians. According to acclaimed intellectual Noam
Chomsky, the “right to exist” for any geographical entity is “a concept
unknown in international affairs.” [1]

Chomsky notes the hypocrisy in the
Zionists’ rejectionism: “Hamas’s refusal to accept Israel’s ‘right to
exist’ mirrors the refusal of Washington and Jerusalem to accept
Palestine’s ‘right to exist.’”

Chomsky follows up with a criticism of
Hamas: “Hamas’s formal commitment to ‘destroy Israel’ places it on a par
with the US and Israel, which vowed formally that there could be no
‘additional Palestinian state.’” Chomsky equates Hamas with the US and
Israel because it rejects the continuation of a state that came into
existence through a pogrom against the Palestinian people.

Hamas did call for the obliteration of
Israel, but Hamas has since dropped this call. [2]
However, if Hamas were to agree to Israel’s “right to exist” on the
Palestinian homeland, it would undermine part of its raison d’être
as laid out in its covenant.

Chomsky speculates:

Although Hamas has not said so, it would
come as no great surprise if Hamas were to agree to allow Jews to remain
in scattered cantons in the present Israel, while Palestine constructs
huge settlement and infrastructure projects to take over the valuable
land and resources, effectively breaking Israel up into unviable
cantons, virtually separated from one another and from some small part
of Jerusalem where Jews would also be allowed to remain. And they might
agree to call the fragments “a state.” If such proposals were made, we
would -- rightly -- regard them as a reversion to Nazism, a fact that
might elicit some thoughts. If such proposals are made, Hamas’s position
would be essentially like that of the US and Israel for the past five
years. [3]

Some thoughts are elicited. If Hamas were
to agree to the continuation of a Jewish state in scattered cantons,
would “we” then consider Hamas’s position to be one of Nazism? Chomsky
equates such a speculative Hamas position to the current position of the
US and Israel. But wait! Israel is guilty of Nazism, and the US through
complicity, because they steal the territory of the indigenous
Palestinians and squeeze them into non-viable cantons. If the
Palestinians attempt to recover the territory stolen from them -- but
not all -- and leave scattered cantons for the ethnic cleansers, then
they are guilty of Nazism? What kind of logic is this?

In a classic case of demonizing the
victim, Chomsky writes, “It is entirely fair to describe Hamas as
radical, extremist, and violent, and as a serious threat to peace and
a just political settlement. But the organization hardly is alone in
this stance.” [italics added]

The comment is actually quite outlandish
coming from a progressive. One wonders: what is even remotely fair about
drawing an equivalency between an aggressor which has violently invaded
and occupied the territory of an indigenous people and the victims who
are only defending and attempting to recover their territory? If a gang
were to break and enter into the abode of Chomsky and fiercely attempt
to evict him and his family, would an act of a violent defense render
Chomsky and his family the terroristic equivalent of the gang? Would
such a conclusion be fair?

For Hamas to pose a “serious threat to
peace and a just political settlement,” there must be such “a just
political settlement” on offer. But Chomsky’s own scholarship over the
years clearly points out the rejectionism of the US-Israel duo of myriad
proposals for a “political settlement,” -- just or not -- with the
Palestinians. [4] Why, then, does he characterize Hamas
as a “serious threat” to something that does not exist and never has
existed?

It should also be noted that Hamas -- “a
serious threat to peace” -- has scrupulously maintained a ceasefire for
the last 16 months. Meanwhile, on 20 May, Israeli forces assassinated
another Palestinian leader, Mohammed Dadouh, in Gaza, killing also a
woman, her five-year-old son, and the grandmother. Who is the “serious
threat to peace”: the side upholding the ceasefire or the side that
engages in what is, by definition, terrorism?

Nonetheless, Palestinians have the
inalienable right of self-defense and the right to resist occupation.

For Hamas to acknowledge the state of
Israel’s “right to exist” is tantamount to acknowledging Israel’s “right
to deny the right to exist” of themselves on their own land. It is to
acknowledge the right of people from another continent to invade and
ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland that they have
inhabited for 4,000 years. It is the right to kill for territorial
theft.

What Hamas is being demanded to do is to
acknowledge and accede to their own history of being ethnically
cleansed. It is a demand to agree to their dispossession. Sheer
nonsense!

Rewarding Zionism at the United Nations

The absurdity continues with United
Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Annan desires Israel’s “unqualified”
membership in the UN. At a function celebrating the centennial of the
American Jewish Committee in Washington, Annan said, “I hope that within
my lifetime, just as in this country, where Jews are accepted without
question as full citizens by all their fellow citizens, so Israel will
be accepted without question as a member by the whole family of
nations.” [5]

The 1947 UN Partition Plan imposed a
Jewish area upon 55 percent of the territory of Palestinians; no
referendum was permitted. The UN had, in effect, rewarded the use of
ethnic cleansing by a racist aggressor.

Then, in 1950, the UN General Assembly
granted conditional membership to Israel. UN General Assembly Resolution
273 ordered Israel to implement UN General Assembly Resolution 181 that
defines the borders of Israel and Palestine and Resolution 194 that
recognizes the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Israel has
never complied with either demand. What does this imply about the
validity of Israel’s status as a current member of the UN? The fact that
UN General Assembly Resolutions are non-binding under international law
does not absolve Israel of its moral duty to honor agreements that it
has signed. Morality and Zionism, however, are mutually exclusive. There
is no morality in the territorial theft of another people’s land.
[6]

The state of Israel is a serial violator
of international law. By Israeli reckoning, from 1967 to 1988, the UN
Security Council passed 88 resolutions against it. During that time
period, the UN General Assembly passed 429 resolutions against Israel.
[7]

Annan’s words amount to a repudiation of
the institution that he nominally heads, an institution sinking deeper
into political irrelevancy.

Why doesn’t Annan call for “unqualified”
Palestinian member state status in the UN? Why does the UN not recognize
one half of the partition it imposed on Palestine?

But then, what kind of comments would one
expect from an individual who categorically states that the invasion of
UN member state Iraq was illegal, and makes no public moves to oppose
the aggression?

Annan stood dismally by when three of his
humanitarian heads in Iraq (UN humanitarian aid chiefs Dennis Halliday,
Hans von Sponeck, and World Food Program chief Jutta Burghardt) resigned
in disgust at the genocide being wreaked on Iraqis by UN sanctions.
Annan’s public silence is, at worst, complicity with genocide.

Trumping Elementary Morality

Israel is a state erected on the
destruction, still ongoing, of another state and its indigenous people.
Israel has been in existence since 1948: a 58-year fact-on-the-ground.
Chomsky holds that the passage of time does give legitimacy to the state
of Israel. As a solution to the current violence, Chomsky concedes this
violent fact-on-the-ground by referring to the “reality” of options
available to the Palestinians. Chomsky argues that it is in the best
interests of the dispossessed and brutalized Palestinians and the
brutalizing Zionist dispossessors to agree to a confederation, but the
“reality” is that the outcome will probably be a two-state solution.
[8]

In other words, to end the present
suffering of Palestinians, the Palestinians should agree to their
dispossession and in return they will be rewarded, supposedly, by a
cessation of the violence against them for the audacity of wanting to
live on their land. What does elementary morality posit about such
reasoning?

Further, since the Zionists have
consistently violated international law and international agreements
that they have undertaken, and since they have refused to delimit their
Zionist state, why would any thinker suggest that Palestinians should
reach an agreement on territorial sharing with the Zionists? Zionist
leader David Ben-Gurion stated, “The acceptance of partition does not
commit us to renounce Transjordan. One does not demand from anybody to
give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed
today -- but the boundaries of the Zionist aspirations are the concern
of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”

Zionist morality is apparently quite
different than conventional elementary morality. In 1937, Ben-Gurion
wrote, “I support compulsory transfer [i.e., ethnic cleansing]. I don’t
see anything immoral in it.” Following the logic of Ben-Gurion, the
Nazis were operating within the bounds of morality when they were
transferring European Jews.

Chomsky’s statements provide cover for
several decades of Zionist expansion. Is Chomsky correct? Does the
passage of time obviate morality and legitimate evil deeds?

What conclusions would Martian observers
of humanity reach when one of Earth’s most celebrated living scholars
intellectually concedes not the tactic of ethnic cleansing but
the result on the grounds of “reality”?

By the same “reality”-based logic,
shouldn’t Chomsky also call for gifting Iraq’s oil to the
invader-occupiers in exchange for partial restoring of Iraq’s
sovereignty and ceasing the lethal violence against Iraqis? After all,
the “reality” is that as long as the Iraqis resist occupation, Iraqis
will die in large numbers.

Shouldn’t the Afghan resistance relent and
allow the traversing of its territory by pipelines in exchange for an
end to occupation and oppression?

The same reasoning would permeate the
historical chain of imperialism. The Vietnamese should have acquiesced
to the Americans, and to the French before them, to spare violent misery
being heaped upon the people. But the Vietnamese succeeded at pushing
the aggressors out of Vietnam. The Iraqi resistance is so far having
stunning success against overwhelming odds. Why, in the particular case
of Zionist atrocities, should Palestinians concede their dignity and
accept decades of ethnic cleansing, killing, and humiliation based on
Chomsky’s view of “reality” that he does not seem to apply elsewhere?

What is the lesson here? Elementary
morality dictates that it is wrong to kill and thieve. However,
according to the rationale proffered by Chomsky, “reality”-driven
considerations trump elementary morality; if an entity thieves and
kills, it should be placated with possession of some of its ill-gotten
booty in exchange for a cessation of its violence. There is no call for
sanctions against the thieving killer; instead it is rewarded for
agreeing to end its violence.

What does such logic ordain for subsequent
acts of theft and violence?

How does it look to Martian observers when
the effete figurehead of the UN and a foremost intellectual and
progressive advocate what amounts to a bankrupting of elementary
morality?